Now she stands, poised, ready to play in her first recital, and Debby, in the front row, unrolls the music poster. But Sophie does not want the music, she doesn’t want help.

“Don’t roll that out! Just roll it up like it was,” she insists as the packed classroom of parents and children watch in silence.

Debby hastily re-rolls the poster and Sophie focuses on her violin.

TWINK-LE, TWINK-LE, LITTLE STAR, sings the violin. Then Sophie pauses.

“Well done, Sophie!!” says the emcee and begins to clap, at which the audience responds with polite applause.

“Not yet!” hollers Sophie over the din, exasperated.

The clapping wanes and Patricia half-stands from her third row seat and loudly whispers to the emcee, “She wants to play the whole thing,” but can only think to herself, ‘Sophie, please don’t throw the violin!’

Sophie returns to playing, a bit distracted by the interruption, the first notes slightly sharp:

HOW I WON-DER WHAT YOU ARE

The melody becomes more hesitant, staggered with pauses, some notes slide prematurely into the next.

UP A ... ... BOVE THE-WORLD SO HIGH

But then the lines of music become confused.

TWINK-LE ... TWINK-LE ... ABOVE THE WORLD

LIKE A ...

Sophie pauses again, pulls her left hand away from the neck of the violin, and touches her thumb to each of her four fingers, trying to remember which line comes next.

“Just repeat the Pooh line,” whispers Debby.

Sophie responds in a high, tight, crying voice, emphatic with stress, “It’s not Pooh line. I’m done with the Pooh Bear! Which one of the other ones?”

Pooh is the first Twinkle verse, and the Violin is the second Twinkle verse. The notes of each line are exact duplicates, but Patricia knows Sophie hasn’t made that connection, she knows Sophie needs to be told to play the Violin line. Patricia notices the man in the seat in front of her. She can only imagine what he is thinking: ‘what a spoiled brat.’ Sophie looks like a typical eight-year-old girl. But little does he know that this whole experience, the noise, the people—let alone the performance itself—is a stress load that can easily overwhelm a child with autism, leading to either complete withdrawal or into full-blown tantrum. And Sophie is struggling, but dealing with the stress. She is coping.

Meanwhile, Debby unrolls Sophie’s music poster and Sophie, undaunted, starts the second Twinkle verse marked by the violin sticker, playing through it perfectly:
TWINK-LE, TWINK-LE, LITTLE STAR —

“Almost done!” Sophie calls sweetly to the crowd.

— HOW I WONDER WHAT YOU ARE.

The room fills with applause and Sophie just beams. She forgets to bow, or even to leave the stage, and the audience responds by continuing to clap. She is filled with awe at the moment.

“Wow,” Sophie says aloud, smiling as she takes it all in. “Wow.”

Afterward Debby and Patricia hug tightly and cry, each thinking how much this moment means to the other. Sophie comes up beside them. “Now maybe you can jump on the trampoline,” she says.

“Now that you’ve had your first recital, maybe I can,” muses Debbie.

Sophie continues, gently, “You don’t have to be scared. I’ll be right beside you the whole time.”

Patricia Wigney hasn’t stopped her search for therapies and programs that will help Sophie. In fact, she has brought her knowledge to her community in Eugene, Oregon by creating Bridgeway House (which opened in October 2003), a center for families affected by autism. Bridgeway House offers counseling and support groups, education, advocacy, doctors who specialize in naturalistic treatments of autism, and instruction on various treatments and therapies. To learn more about Bridgeway House and/or autism, visit bridgewayhouse.org.

TABITHA THOMPSON (LNF 2004) is a freelance writer living in Salt Lake City. She is at work on a book about Bridgeway House.